SCOTT, Sir Walter |
Waverley Novels 1842. The Great Abbotsford Edition, Lavishly Illustrated With Over 2000 Portraits and ViewsSCOTT, Sir Walter. The Waverley Novels. Edinburgh: Robert Cadell, 1842-47. The Abbotsford Edition. Twelve volumes extended to twenty-five large octavo volumes (9 3/4 x 6 1/2 inches; 247 x 165 mm.). Illustrated throughout with textual steel engravings and over two thousand engravings including some double-page.Handsomely bound by W. Pratt ca. 1890 in full red levant morocco, covers with triple gilt-rule borders and corner thistles. Spines with five raised band, decoratively tooled with a thistle design in compartments and lettered in gilt, gilt board edges, and decorative turn-ins, tope, edge gilt, decorative endpapers. Several volumes with joints expertly repaired but still an outstanding and very imposing set of this, the best edition of Sir Walter Scott. Bookplate of The Philip H. and A.S.W. Rosenbach Foundation Museum on each front paste-down.The engravings are highly interesting and quite remarkable. This is by far the finest and most interesting set of Sir Walter Scott that we have ever seen. "The Proprietors of the Waverley Novels have had the great satisfaction in the results of their efforts to bring those Works in convenient form within the reach of the less opulent classes of the community. the Proprietors were also taking measures for an edition of a different character. This is the age of graphically illustrated Books; and it remained to affix to these Works, so interwoven everywhere with details of historical and antiquarian interest, such Engraved Embellishments as, had the Author himself been now alive, his personal tastes and resources would most probably have induced him to place before students of antiquity and lovers of art Accordingly, for this Edition, the real localities of his scenes have been explored; the real portraits of his personages have been copied; and his surviving friends and personal admirers, as well as many public bodies and institutions, have liberally places whatever their collections afforded at the disposal of the eminent Artists engaged by the Proprietors The embellishments of The Abbotsford Edition will be in number about Two Thousand. Among the Painters whose Sketches have been employed may be enumerated --- Wilkie, Maclise, Bonnar, Buss, Paton, Landseer, Lauder, Fraser, Sibson, Fairholt, Roberts, Simson, Allan, Duncan, The Harveys, Phiz, Prior, Nasmyth, Kidd, Johnstone, Sargent, Dickes, [and] MacIan. Among the Engravers on Steel and Wood --- Miller, Forest, Jackson, Sly, Withy, Goodall, Wilson, Landells, Evans, Gilks, Horsburgh, Thomson, Whimper, Keck, Nugent, Wilmore, Branston, Smith, Kirchner, Rimbault, Brandard, Williams, Linton, Bastin, Greenaway, Richardson, Green, Folkard [and] Wakefield. The prominent Scenery described in the Novels has been adhered to with the utmost care by Clarkson Stanfield, R.A., who spent last Summer in its investigation, and has already finished whatever was needed for the earlier Novels. It is not proposed to enlarge to any extent the Annotations with this Edition; but some curious additions will be found, especially as to Guy Mannering and the Bride of Lammermoor. January 17th, 1842." (Notice to Abbotsford Edition, volume 1, pp. 3 & 4). The Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia is located within two 19th-century townhouses at 2008 and 2010 Delancey Place in Philadelphia. The historic houses contain the collections and treasures of Philip Rosenbach and his younger brother Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach. The brothers owned the Rosenbach Company which became the preeminent dealer of rare books, manuscripts and decorative arts during the first half of the 20th century. Dr. Rosenbach in particular was seminal in the rare book world, helping to build libraries such as the Widener Library at Harvard, The Huntington Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library.
[Bookseller: David Brass Rare Books, Inc.]